I can envisage the childish sneer on the face of Fegyőr (András Fekete-Győr, if we’re being pedantic) as he chants this nursery-level chant at the rest of the Hungarian political players, thumbs plugged into his ears, waggling his fingers all the while. This, sad as it is to admit, is one of the dimensions of Hungarian public life. A very flat, uninspiring dimension, true, but a dimension we are forced to consider nonetheless.
This self-designated young buck on the Left seems to truly embody the phrase
‘all mouth – no trousers’.
There is nothing to him. He’s a walking slogan, communicating in soundbites. It’s as though an international advertising agency has undertaken to create a pastiche of the image of...something. I honestly can’t put my finger on what the pastiche is meant to represent, but despite that, the overwhelming tang of Fegyőr is one of artificial materials and chemicals. He’s the embodiment of nylon work trousers.
Fegyőr claims to be many things, and I for one, can’t work out exactly what he is, but one thing he is not, is credible. That is a massive mistake. That someone, preparing to unleash a veritable software-infused Frankenstein’s monster upon the Hungarian political scene, should have failed to notice that politics is based almost exclusively on credibility seems almost untenable. Wholly untenable, a fatuous idea. And yet, when we consider Fegyőr, it appears that exactly that has occurred.
What we appear to be faced with in the persona of Fegyőr and the rest of his gang to be found in the itsy-bitsy ‘political party’ of Momentum is the modern-day version of rayon. Quite why his creators thought it was high time to reintroduce artificial materials into the fabric of Hungarian political life is beyond me, but based on all evidence, that is what the people pushing him into the limelight of Hungarian political life are doing.
Recently, presumably upon advice from a control group of teenage students of modern political history, Fegyőr started off in a direction that nobody saw coming.
Yes, realising that there was a veritable gulf in the world of political credibility, and apparently having developed an awareness of the importance of credibility for a would-be politician, Fegyőr and his benefactors struck out on their own, pushing the young pioneer into the unexplored wasteland of the fantastical idea that people cannot deny polygraphic data from being winkled out of their unsuspecting noggins.
The polygraph, however, normally travels under the misleading name of ‘lie detector’.
So, the lie detector, a favourite reliable means of forcing the truth out of suspected moles and spies when there isn’t any truth serum handy. Yes, but that’s what we’ve been led to believe by TV and film producers over the past few decades. In actual fact, the truth, as ever, is more elusive than that.
Typically, by virtue of the fact that it involves inferring attempts at deception through the analysis of physiological responses, the idea of lie detectors being accurate, can, for the most part, be discarded.
So, a machine which is utilised without there being any basis for the theory that any pattern of psychological and physiological exists when people are attempting to deceive.
Cod technology. Something that works wonders in TV and films where, it must be noted, people are relating a scripted event.
In the real world, things are not scripted. But in the world of Momentum, in the gang run ostensibly with Fegyőr at its head, the scripted version of reality is all that can be seen.
We were treated to a piece of performance art recently to celebrate Fegyőr’s commitment to scripts in place of sincerity. Keywords fell from his gesticulating, chubby lips as though we were being treated to a brain-storming session around a whiteboard in a room full of the tik-tok generation.
“No Hungarian politician has ever had themselves wired up to a polygraph, that is, a lie-detector.”
“I represent a new type of political generation, one which never wants to cheat, steal, or lie in politics.”
Two great lines, two lines about which any advertising executive, eager to reap the pocket money of the next few generations as they gaze in wonder at the majestic videos that their peers are capable of producing, would smile and lick their fingers.
Slightly less impressive when we consider that the man making these hip, cool, with it, swaggering statements is actually in his early thirties. What’s wrong with him? Did he not notice that he was continually growing up, maturing beyond the point where meaningless statements such as his would only be considered acceptable in an advertising agency? Surely, we’re on the edge of discovering a new form of ‘Peter Pan-itis’, aren’t we?
No matter, let’s ignore the immaturity that Fegyőr seems intent on pushing as a stand-in for credibility, and consider what lies behind the smoke and mirrors of his video.
Well, the first statement, for all the implications of Fegyőr possessing a fine, polished set of brass balls in his y-fronts, this dramatic declaration counts for less than the steam off a pile of puppy poo. Caught up in his own tornado of desire to draw attention to something which would make people stop mid-stride and think about the essential truth of what this plump-lipped yuppie who continually forgets to shave in the mornings is saying, the jury has long since returned its verdict. Polygraphs are about as reliable a tool of determining truth as the ‘one potato, two potato’ method of counting is at solving advanced pure mathematics problems.
And onto the next world-beater. Fegyőr attempts to set himself aside. He’s determined to convince us all that he’s the only fresh thing on the menu. The only trouble is, however, that once more, credibility is lacking.
Fegyőr is a man who now takes his orders from the true Triton of the minnows, Fletó Gyurcsány. Make no mistake, it is Gyurcsány, not Fegyőr who will call the shots when push comes to shove.
Fegyőr’s credibility is, once more, underlined by his own words and actions. Far from being the only fresh thing on the menu, he’s already turned himself inside out, desperately trying to find the golden key that will enable him and his microcosm of a political party to set foot inside the hallowed hall of parliament. In searching for this mythical means to enter the Hungarian parliament and thereby confer gravitas and credibility upon himself and the rag-tag band of misfits he views as the saviours of Hungary, he’s already had plenty to say:
“I would like to send the political elite of the last 27 years into retirement”
Fine. Young blood, young Turk. But he goes further:
“…I don’t know what the Hell Ferenc Gyurcsány is still doing in politics. He truly should absent himself from public life.”
And there’s the rub. That small puff of smoke, only slightly visible in the background is the remains of Fegyőr’s supposed credibility evaporating. This man, of course, has now signed up to serve under Fletó’s command.
